Few things went right for the Miami Marlins offense during the 2013 season but there were bright spots on the other side of the ball. Shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria proved to be one of the more exciting defensive shortstops in all of Major League Baseball. He is very young and still has kinks to work out in every facet of the game but his success at the current level of play begs the question. How far is Hechavarria from being one of the elite shortstops in the game?

We should break this down into offense and defense because the road is much longer on the offensive side of the game. He hit only around .220 for the season and only hit .270 on balls in play. He was pretty good at making contact with the ball and just putting the bat on the ball, but rarely did it result in a hit. He only had a few home runs but that wasn’t a big deal. The low average would need a ton of work before he was considered one of the better offensive infielders in the game.

Defensively he isn’t nearly that far away. He can make exciting plays with pretty good regularity but seems to sometimes have a little issue with just the normal shortstop plays. He isn’t the only good young shortstop to have this problem. Even with it however, he is still only a year or so away from probably have the experience at the position that it will take for him to achieve elite defensive shortstop status. Having said that; it is also possible that he won’t make the necessary adjustments to avoid making mistakes and won’t achieve elite status. It should be fun to see how he develops as the 2014 season goes by.